Pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum) is one of three millets domesticated in Africa, and the earliest, circa 2500 BC.
Archaeological evidence points to climate change as the spurring of the domestication and spread of millets in Africa. Between about 6000-3000 BC, cattle pastoralism was the dominant mode of life at the edges of the Sahara in Africa, but beginning 3000 BC, a dessication of those grassland edges began. Pearl millet became a base crop and was domesticated in west Africa by 2500 BC, and it spread rapidly first into East Africa, then across into the Indian subcontinent.
- Domestication of Pearl Millet, the full story and evidence
- Domestication of Cattle
- Table of Plant Domestication
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